Other than #4, a new form of story telling, I fail to see how this is different from YouTube. In Fact, YouTube actually works on multiple platforms, unlike Vine at this point. Six seconds will not really help convey most news stories.

A key tenant of this product seems to be solving for large uploads and downloads. This can be solved in the short term by reducing resolution or length of a film in the field, not by product mandate. This problem will be solved in the long term by improved network speeds and costs. I suspect Vine will be a product that a lot of people experiment with and few people actually ever use for the long term. Aside from porn, expect traction with the looping kitten videos segment.